Inland Empire California

For people who live in Southern California, the Inland Empire is a popular term for the region that surrounds and includes the cities of Ontario, San Bernardino and Riverside. The name "Inland Empire" was first used in the 1950s to distinguish the region from the nearby Los Angeles area.

History

Prior to the mid-19th century, the area was sparsely populated by Native Americans; the Spanish and Mexicans who once controlled the area considered it largely unsuitable for colonization. The first group of white American settlers arrived over the Cajon Pass in 1851, in the form of Mormon pioneers who were the first settlers of San Bernardino. Although the Mormons left a scant six years later, recalled to Salt Lake by Brigham Young during the church's standoff with the US government, more settlers soon followed.

The arrival of railroads in subsequent decades and the importation of navel and Valencia orange trees touched off explosive growth, with the area becoming a major center for citrus production. This agricultural boom continued with the arrival of water from the Colorado River and the rapid growth of Los Angeles in the early 20th century, with dairy farming becoming another staple industry. In 1926, Route 66 came through the northern parts of the area, bringing a stream of tourists and migrants to the region.

As with the other agricultural areas in Southern California, such as the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys and Orange County, urban development eventually came to the Inland Empire. Since the 1980s, the area has become a major bedroom community for families priced out of home ownership in Orange and Los Angeles counties, with African-Americans fleeing South Central Los Angeles playing a particularly large role in the area's exurban development. Residential development has been largely unplanned, with a suburban sprawl pattern predominating.

Cheap land and excellent transportation connections have also made it a major industrial center, with freight distribution (from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the rest of the country) a particularly important sector. As a result, traffic congestion has become problematic, and air pollution--both locally generated and blown into the region from the Los Angeles Basin and San Gabriel Valley--has reached crisis level. In 2004, the EPA rated the San Bernardino-Riverside area as having the worst particulate air pollution in the United States (although the San Joaquin Valley in central California had the worst overall air pollution).

Some residents (mainly adolescents and children) have begun calling it "the IE" as a response to the popularity of the television program The OC (which centers around a character originally from Chino who relocates to wealthy Newport Beach).

Geography

The massive region covers the western portions of Riverside County and San Bernardino County, from their boundaries with Orange and Los Angeles counties to the San Jacinto Mountains on the east, and from the San Bernardino Mountains on the north to the San Diego County line on the south. The Victor Valley, lying to the north of the San Bernardino range and to the east of the Antelope Valley in the southern Mojave Desert, is also considered part of the Inland Empire.

Valleys in the Inland Empire include:

Incorporated cities in the Inland Empire include:

Freeways serving the Inland Empire include:

External links


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Central Valley | Central Coast | Channel Islands | Coast Ranges | Gold Country | Greater Los Angeles | Imperial Valley | Inland Empire | Mojave | Napa Valley | Northern California | Owens Valley | Pomona Valley | Redwood Empire | San Fernando Valley | San Francisco Bay Area | The Peninsula | San Gabriel Valley | Santa Clara Valley | Santa Clarita Valley | Shasta Cascade | Sierra Nevada | Silicon Valley | Southern California | Wine Country


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